


In any universe, I'd choose you.

by sublightsleeper



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Actors (not RPF), Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Dirty Talk, M/M, Malace, Malec, Shadowhunter Magnus Bane, Shadowhunter Simon Lewis, Silent Brother Magnus Bane, Unrelated chapters, Warlock Alec Lightwood, Warlock Jace Wayland, background Jace/Simon, badass magnus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 09:18:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 6,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15288402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sublightsleeper/pseuds/sublightsleeper
Summary: A series of unrelated Shadowhunters drabbles from tumblr. 90% Malec, 90% AUs.





	1. Pre-series Malec

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 1: Malec, canon divergence.

There’s the ash outline of a demon on the floor of the supply room and the bass is pounding through the walls around them. There’s still an arrow clutched in the shadowhunter’s hand, the head of it catching against the shell of Magnus’ ear. 

This is madness. But Magnus can taste the sugar from his own lips on the boy’s sweet, swollen mouth and he can’t bring himself to care about anything else. 

“Put your arrows away.” He whispers against the shadowhunter’s ear, watching the way he shudders from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. The quiver disappears almost as soon as the arrow is nestled inside, and Magnus loops his arms around that graceful neck, the snap of his fingers sending magic trailing down over them. 

And in its wake, the dark lines of runes fade from pale skin. A simple glamour, not enough to draw attention from the patrons of the club. (Or at least, less attention than a shadowhunter walking through a downworld rave would.)

“Have a drink with me.” Stay. Dance. Let me keep kissing you. 

The boy’s eyes are hazel and bright, churning somewhere between green and brown. He keeps opening his mouth and closing, words never seeming to find their way off of the tip of his tongue. 

He nods. That’s all Magnus needs. Fingers are laced as he leads Alec back into the press of the music and bodies all around them. He can see the boy fighting against himself, against the urge to bolt and shadowhunter instincts. He’s a walking contradiction, lean and dangerous and doe eyed. Magnus thinks he might be in love. 

It might be cheating to hand him a fae shot, but Magnus knocks his back just the same, fighting laughter when the boy’s face flushes, and sours at the taste of it. Bitter, but potent. “Dance with me.”

The boy leans in close. “Alec.”

Magnus isn’t sure if he misheard him, or if the boy had worked this long to get the courage to get his name out. So he humors him, a hand wrapped around his nape. “Dance with me, Alec.”

The boy (AlecAlecAlec) shudders at the sound of his name on Magnus’ lips. It’s enough of an invitation for Magnus to start pulling him onto the dance floor. He steals two more neon colored shots from a tray, and this time the bitter face comes before the swallow, but Alec swallows it. 

In the throng of moving bodies, the liquor starts to do its work. Alec brushes sweaty hair from his forehead, and when Magnus presses his back against Alec’s chest, a hand settles absent and comfortable against his waist as they move.


	2. Malec pre series, Badass Magnus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Magnus and Alec have been seeing each other in secret, and then everything goes wrong.

It is a testament to just how bad things truly are that he even gets the phone call. Magnus only has time to glance at a text, his screen lighting up with Alec’s name before he sees _its Izzy, Alec hurt badly, demon attack._

Then the phone rings.

Maryse Lightwood’s voice is one he could go the rest of his incredibly long life without having to hear again, but there it is, clipped and professional. She tells him that there has been an ‘incident’. That a rogue warlock has attacked a shadowhunter. One who needs healing. 

She tells him, with disdain in her every word, how he will be adequately reimbursed for his time. Both to heal the shadowhunter, and to track the warlock who did this.

“I’ll need time to gather supplies. There’s a potion and instructions that will be waiting at the door to the institute while I get what I need.”

Magnus sends the demon poison antidote before the line disconnects, and he turns his attention back to the pale young warlock floating in the air in front of him, bleeding and wild eyed. 

“You had an opportunity to earn yourself a quick death. If you would have freed Alexander when I asked, you could be done right now. Free from pain. But you…you chose to cross me.”

There’s a freedom now that Alec isn’t here. The last tether to his humanity safe and warm in his institute.

Magnus pulls the magic up from beneath his feet, drawing from a place he’s only rarely dared to dip into. It was dark, dark magic. (Maybe for once in his miserable, unending existence, he would do his father proud.)

It takes hours. Magnus is methodical in his torture, though he cripples the other warlock’s vocal chords within the first hour, leaving him to endure his agony in a silent mask, jaw cracked and mouth open. 

Strip by strip, he peels the skin from muscle and fat and bone. And then he shoves each stringy strand into that seizing mouth and holds it closed with his own fingers until he’s forced to swallow. 

Again, and again, until the warlock is vomiting up messy pink chunks, conscious only by the unholy grace of Magnus’ magic. 

The last thing he takes is that forked tongue. 

The high warlock is given a book of spells not meant for anyone else. Special things, wards and protections. Ways to keep their people safe. But there is a spell in there too, written neatly in the back of the book in old cuniform, on how to summon every warlock under your protection. 

Magnus has never truly imposed himself on the other warlocks in New York. He lets them do what they must, travel where they will. Until now. 

Until ancient magic sings dark songs in his veins and Magnus summons the warlocks of New York and the surrounding states en masse to the ornate meeting room above the loft that he never uses. 

Voices cascade over each other. Angry, scared, irritated. They babble like running water. “There seems to be a misunderstanding.” Magnus’ voice is cavernous, too dark and deep to follow to its depth. Every voice in the room falls silent. 

“The accords are for the protection of all of us. Think of them like herd immunity. The strong stand for it, so the weak may be protected. And no warlock under my care will be put at risk because a fool decides to break the accords.”

For the first time, Magnus opens his fist. That bloodied, forked tongue hits the table with a meaty thud, and rolls forward. There’s an audible gasp, somewhere in the room. 

“So let me be absolutely clear. This is the fate that befalls any warlock who breaks the accords.”

He puts both hands against the table, fingers still stained red. There’s a piece of tendon hanging from the curved ring on his pinkie. 

“And this fate will seem like a blessing to anyone who dares lay a hand on Alexander Lightwood.”

The name sends a tremor through the room, but all eyes stay on him. “Dismissed.”

With a snap of his fingers, they’re all displaced back to where they’d been before, leaving Magnus to stare at the remains of a warlock mark on his war table.


	3. Jagnus, college AU

The music is terrible, something masquerading as rap music because it’s got an off tune voice over bass. The frat house is atrocious, dirty clothes all over the floor and a waste basket with used condoms stuck to the side. 

It’s the kind of place Magnus wouldn’t be caught dead in. 

Except he is here. Pleasantly, gloriously naked and being fucked by fraternity poster child Jace Lightwood. 

Which is not to say Magnus has lost all his standards. This isn’t some furtive, back alley repression fuck. No, Jace is just as naked as Magnus is, running big palms up along Magnus’ thighs with lazy reverence. 

They’re both drunk, of course. There was no way Magnus could deal with Jace sober. And if he’s honest? When the urge strikes him to get fucked, he loves it like this, when the guy inside of him is too drunk to come, and too stubborn to quit. 

Each time Magnus slides down on Jace’s cock, there’s an obscene squelch and it sets his nerve endings on fire. Long fingers push sweaty blonde hair away from a classically beautiful, carved face. 

Jace would be exactly Magnus’ type, if he never opened his mouth. 

But for the moment, those stunning heterochromatic eyes are settled on him and that mouth is closed, and Magnus is free to perform. 

He rolls his hips down, the tip of his dick brushing against Jace’s hard abs. Magnus makes a show of biting at his bottom lip and lowering his lashes. Jace scrapes blunt nails down Magnus’ chest, and the shuddering sound he makes isn’t for thematics. 

“Fuck me.” This is what people expect of him, with the eye liner and the lip gloss and the nail polish. They expect him to be sweet, to be a greedy little slut who begs for it. And every now and again, Magnus loves to comply. He’s no man’s bitch, but there’s something freeing about being his own slut. “Fuck me, Jace.”

(And maybe there’s some level of trust there too. Jace is a douchebag, but he’s an honest one, and he’s never so much as touched Magnus when he didn’t want to be touched. That’s why he gets to be the man in this perversion of heteronormative fantasy.) 

The hands against his sides slide and there’s one holding steady at his neck, and the other gripping his ass, and then Jace is really fucking him. Skin slapping against skin, and Magnus isn’t faking these breathless whimpers, he’s holding on and taking and God it’s so fucking hot- 

“Right there. Right there-” Magnus’ voice hitches, and God bless Jace Lightwood and his competitive streak and his athlete’s body, because he holds himself exactly the way Magnus wants (needs) it and gives it to him. 

“Don’t stop. Don’t stop. God, don’t stop.” Magnus’ back arches, a sharp curve and Jace’s hand presses in against it and forces Magnus down on that last inch and he comes, shuddering and shaking and shooting his load against all the golden god skin. 

Magnus rides out the aftershocks with shallow rolls of his hips, relishing the hey! When he slides off of Jace, already reaching for his jeans. He steps into them, kicking his underwear under Jace’s bed, another trophy for him to surround himself with, and walks backwards toward the door, shoes and shirt in hand. 

“Don’t tell your brother.” Magnus’ grin is electric, and he shakes his head to get the sweaty hair to stop sticking to his forehead. 

Because if Magnus had it his way, he was going to cross the last Lightwood off of his list before the semester was over.


	4. Reverse (Shadowhunter Magnus and Warlock Alec)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Magnus Bane is sent to get help from the High Warlock of Brooklyn, Alec Lightwood. But no one really expects him to make any progress. But Alec keeps letting him in, and Magnus can't stop coming back.

Simon says _could this possibly get any worse_ and Magnus wants to kick him in the teeth for it. Because things are falling apart right now as it is, and they don’t need cosmic karma writing a check that Simon Lewis’ ass can’t cash. 

They’d come here to find Jace, taken by Rufus and his Circle lackeys. It was bad enough that Simon was single handedly obsessed with Jace, all it had taken was a quiet ‘I need to find my brother’ from Alec and Magnus was breaking the rules. 

Again. His father was going to kill him. 

But it had been a set up. Rufus knew they were coming, and they were trapped on a tanker in the middle of the Hudson, surrounded on all sides by demons. Jace was unconscious, Alec was using every bit of his magic to keep the boat from sinking. 

They were screwed. 

Simon had the right, Magnus had the left. All they had to do was kill about twenty demons. Before Alec’s magic ran out and they all died. No sweat. They could do this. 

Until the door at the end of the room splintered open, a greater demon heaving itself through the gaping hole. 

“You _had_ to ask.”

Simon, to his credit, at least looks sheepish. Magnus tosses him the seraph blade he usually kept strapped to his thigh. Simon fought better with two blades. And Magnus? He was never much for swords anyway. 

The quiver materializes on his back, and he’s lifting his bow in one smooth motion, knocking and pulling before the runes light along the arrow’s shaft. He lines up his shot, breathing out. 

The arrow sinks through the eye of a shax demon, who explodes. “One down, twenty to go.”

And then everything becomes chaos. Magnus focuses on taking out as many of the smaller demons as he can, keeping an eye on Simon as much as he can in his peripheral. For someone who was never truly trained, he took to seraph blades like he was born for it. 

Around them, the ship creaks. Magnus looks over just in time to see a demon rounding on Alec where he was bent over his brother. “Alec!” Panic explodes in his chest. Magnus runs, hurling himself at the demon. He connects with it before it can swipe ichor stained claws at Alec, tumbling to the floor. 

The last remaining arrow in his quiver is wrenched free and driven into the demon’s neck, and it explodes. 

Alec is waning, slick with sweat from exertion and pale. Magnus skids to a halt next to him. ‘I need your strength.’ Those dark eyes are heavy with apology. Magnus doesn’t hesitate. 

“Take what you need. Portal out. Simon and I will handle this.” Alec looks at him, and Magnus has to surge up onto his feet, the connection of their hands tenuous as he takes the broken arrow shaft and stabs at an incoming demon. “Go!”

The portal flickers, and struggles, but it opens. Alec takes his brother by the shoulders and pulls him through, the portal sputtering closed behind them. 

Magnus feels his back hit Simon’s. They’re surrounded. “Any bright ideas?” 

Actually… 

Simon pulls his stele free, drawing golden dust mites in the air into the shape of a rune Magnus has never seen before. 

It’s the last thing he sees before the world goes white.


	5. Malace, canon divergent (Silent Brother Magnus)

They’re standing in the open door, shoulder to shoulder. A matched pair of book ends, a metaphor given bone and flesh. Night and day. The moon and the sun. Two halves to the same whole. 

Parabatai. 

The only reason his immortal life still moved on. (He wasn’t immortal, not anymore. Not truly. The grains in the hourglass were glacial, but there would eventually be an end to his life. Magnus finds that thought comforting.)

He can’t see Jace and Alec, but he can _see_ them all the same. Glimpses plucked from their minds, half thoughts on reflective surfaces, building to something whole inside of him. 

_“I don’t need to sleep anymore, remember?”_ Magnus’ voice, though lips don’t move. He reaches up to brush his fingers across the closed lids of his eyes, still expecting to feel the runes like stitches against his skin. 

He can’t. And they’re faint where he can see himself through Alec and Jace’s eyes, his face still his own, though gold cat’s eyes will never open again. 

That was the price of living. Silence. 

The runes should have killed him. That magic wasn’t made for demon blood. But the City of Bones had accepted him, born between the arms of two nephilim, and it was Magnus’ own past that gave him a chance. Brother Zachariah and Tessa Gray. 

A warlock shadowhunter and a vampire venom injected silent brother. Two more abominations. At least if Magnus died, he didn’t die alone. 

But he didn’t die. He bore strength across two strong hands, two strong hearts. One soul. When it was over, when his screams stopped, both vocal and telepathic, Tessa rested on the stone with his head in her lap, brushing the hair away from his face. 

_You’re the only one who truly understands, Magnus._

At the time, he’d thought she meant demon blood and the new runes creeping across his skin, knitting him back together. (Taking parts of him, cutting them away. Making something new of him.)

In the weeks after, he’d come to realize what she really meant. 

They were one soul. And it was impossible to love one without loving the other. 

When they thought he was sleeping, ear pressed against Alec’s chest to lose himself in the beat of his heart, Magnus would hear the hitching breaths, he would know Alec was crying. And in his frozen hesitation, golden fingers would brush through dark hair, soothing him. 

When Magnus was first taken to the archives, it was Alec’s hand that crept into Jace’s to help him find comfort. To make him strong. 

Magnus spends his first few months of silence taking on every rune they will brand against his skin. Cutting away at his humanity. Trying to cut out the pieces of his heart that ached so absolutely. 

But the ache doesn’t go. And neither do the parabatai. Stubborn and insistent, waiting day after day and week after week to draw him out into the sunlight, to sit with him in the grass. To keep him human. 

The words find him when he’s allowed to walk the halls of the New York Institute. Alec is the head of this place now, and he brings growth and change with him, Jace strong at his side. They are a united front. Unstoppable. 

Even here, now, trying to look after him. Together. 

_They shared each other’s souls since they were children. How could I not love them both?_

Oh.


	6. Prince of Hell Magnus, Runaway Shadowhunter Alec, Malec

Magnus knew they were coming. It was only a matter of time. But time, in the hands of an immortal, was just as much a weapon as anything.

So he chooses his battleground well, and makes the Clave representatives come to him, to his club close enough to dusk that Magnus not only has Maia, leader of the New York pack at his right, but Raphael as well. 

Vampires, werewolves and warlocks. A united front. Or as close as one got without doing dirty dealings with the Queen of the Fae. 

“Did you know that Pandemonium is the name for one of the levels of hell? That’s how humans got the word. They associated it with what happened when hell broke loose.”

He crosses an ankle over a knee, spine straight in his throne. (There’s no other word for that massive chair, nothing else Magnus would deign to call it.)

“And as you nephilim are so quick to remind me, I’m the prince of hell. So really…you should be bowing right now.”

There’s a hushed wave of laughter behind him, Raphael and Maia’s men enjoying watching the shadowhunters realize they were surrounded. Magnus wasn’t going to push for a fight, but he’d be a fool not to prepare for one. 

“ _The law is hard, but it is the law._ ” Words he’s heard over centuries. Words that have lost meaning beneath xenophobia and bigotry. Marian Whitelaw would turn in her grave to see what her beloved institution had become. 

“Well, the downworld has its own laws. And we adhere to them very strictly. It’s how we survive.” Magnus lets his gaze sweep over to Raphael, just as soft and angelic as the day Magnus drug him away from the sunlight to stop him from turning to dust. “And what is our number one rule, Raphael?”

The voice that answers is soft spoken, but still manages to fill the ear, to land intently on every ear. 

_We protect each other._

Alec separates himself from the shadows, still garbed in warrior’s black. There is no seraph blade at his hip, but the bow and quiver across his back send their message well when he stands at Magnus’ left.

“Alexander Lightwood is one of us. And woe betide the fool who tries to take him from the downworld.”


	7. Alternate Universe Malec (1x10)

This is a mistake. 

It’s a mistake the moment he steps into the building, it’s a mistake when he steps out of the elevator to the floor for Lightwood Events. And it is absolutely, indisputably a mistake when Alec’s mother gives him a calculating look as he asks for Alec. 

But he’s escorted to an airy, beautifully lit office, though it has nothing on the way Alec’s smile lights Magnus up inside.

 _You came_. Alec sounds surprised. Pleasantly so. He stands, suit coat open and Magnus loses a good few seconds of time to watching the line of his throat book ended by his collar. 

“You uh…you paid for a reading.” He holds up his cards, feeling the faint thrum of magic in his veins, though it’s still a surprise after so many years of lying dormant. Alec offers him a chair across from the desk, and a drink, and Magnus takes the first, but not the second. “I don’t…really drink anymore?”

He doesn’t do much of anything anymore. He’s been Faded for so long, going through the motions. But now his heart is hammering in his chest and Magnus feels more alive than he has in centuries.

If his hands tremble when he lays the first card down, Alec makes no mention of it. 

“Temperance.” Magnus doesn’t put on the show he normally does. He’s too off balance to put on the facade, and Alec is watching him just as intently as clients do even when he does make a show of it. “You’re a man who firmly believes in right and wrong, and you’d do anything to make things right.”

Alec doesn’t answer, and Magnus doesn’t look up. He slips the next card from the top of the deck, flipping it down against the table with his breath held in his chest. “The World. This means you have a strong ambition to live your live successfully, and with liberation.” Magnus glances up through his lashes. Alec seemed to be living that life. Successful and free. 

“Nine of cups. Health and happiness can and will be obtained.” It’s a good reading, almost too good. If this were any other paying customer, he’d fudge a warning or two in there so that they didn’t think he was hustling them.

And there, as if he’d summoned with his own thoughts, the third card. “Four of pentacles. Lots of financial gain and material success. But-” His throat works, and even though he knows better, Magnus holds those incredible eyes. “But it isn’t enough. Your life lacks depth.”

There’s surprise in the arch of Alec’s brow, but he doesn’t interrupt. (God, how Magnus hates the ones that interrupt.) The last card sends a bolt of magical energy along his arm, making the hairs stand up on end. Magnus should have known.

The Lovers.

Magnus struggles to shove the cards together, and back in their pouch, even as Alec laughs, warm and pleased. He thinks this is a game. A way to flirt, and be coy. But Magnus can’t do this. He can’t breathe.

“I should–I have to go. I’ll…I’ll refund your money later.” He nearly upends the chair in his haste to get up and Magnus needs to get out of here, because this beautiful, bright boy has no idea what it’s like, he has no idea-

A long fingered hand presses against the closed door to Alec’s office, and Magnus is trapped there, warmth building against his back when Alec steps in close. Magnus closes his eyes, gooseflesh racing down his arms at proximity.

But it is nothing compared to the feeling of lips against the crook of his neck, sweet and soft, and patient.

_Don’t worry, Magnus. We’ll get there._


	8. Malec (canon compliant)

Summoning Agramon is a terrible gambit. 

But the demon has been targeting shadowhunters, and their already thin numbers can’t bear the brunt of many more deaths. So Magnus is the one who offers to summon it, in hopes of containing it until one of their rank could send it back to hell where it belonged. 

The roof is the only place big enough for the size of the pentagram that he needs, and Magnus’ stomach is twisted with fear and dread long before he finishes the lines. 

(His hands never waver. Fear is an old friend, and Magnus is well versed in hiding from it.)

There’s no lack of argument when he tells his friends that they have to keep their distance. And as much as he hates it, Magnus knows what he must ask. Alec is the only one with the control, and the aim to spear the beast in the heart. 

So he puts them at the farthest end of the roof, near the access door and all but hidden behind it. The less chance of Agramon catching sight of them, the better. 

The summoning spell is in a dead language, the kind of old magic that takes root in the marrow of Magnus’ bones and makes him feel like he’s a speck of a man, a newborn in the grand scheme of things. 

For a moment, when the fires die down, Agramon is little more than a roiling cloud. Black and massive, eeriely lit eyes staring back from the heart of the storm. 

But the Greater Demon’s magic slithers up Magnus’ ankle and around his hip, diving into his heart with razor sharp claws. It coalesces into something more solid, less and less a cloud, and more the shape of a man. 

A man with dark, wild hair and hazel eyes. Standing on a ledge. 

_You did this_. The wind catches the edge of Not!Alec’s shirt, a flash of pale skin and a vibrant rune before it’s covered again. _I had a good life, Magnus, and you ruined it._

Maintaining the pentagram takes a good portion of his focus and effort. But it isn’t enough. Because he can still hear that voice, and it draws his eyes just like it always has. 

Alec’s generous mouth is twisted into a hateful frown. _You really thought I would stay? With you? You’re half demon, Magnus. And the rest of you?_ Alec shakes his head. _What could possibly make you think I could love you more than him? Jace is a part of me._

The words hit their mark. One after another, a death of a thousand cuts. And when his heart thinks it can take no more, Alec steps backwards, a heel hanging over the back of the ledge.

_He was a part of me. Until you tricked me into ruining my life. I lost everything because of you. My family. My career. My li-_

The arrow whistles over his shoulder, steady and true. It buries itself beneath Not!Alec’s breastbone, and there’s a moment before the demon evaporates where all Magnus can see is Alec, falling off of the ledge. 

Again. 

He reaches out without thought, the magic of the pentagram disintegrating beneath his crushing grief and agony. The demon bursts into a cloud of black, and disappears onto the winds. 

“You should all get back to the institute.” Centuries of hard work are the only thing that keeps his voice steady. “Report to the clave that the demon has been dispatched.”

Magnus moves out of the way before Alec’s hand can land on his shoulder. He can’t handle that right now. He can’t meet those eyes. 

“I’ll call you tomorrow, Alexander.”


	9. Malec (Character death)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter works under the assumption that Alec dies at the end of 3x10.

Alec Lightwood dies in an alley, with blood in his lungs and his back on wet concrete. He dies (without saying goodbye, without saying I love you) with reassurance for Jace on his lips. 

_It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t you. I forgive you._ (Magnus still isn’t sure what was worse. Jace’s screams or Alec’s silence.)

And in all the ways that matter, Magnus Bane dies right there along with him. 

Mortal life has always been a fleeting thing. Magnus has buried friends, he’s buried lovers. He’s buried regrets and longing. But it is nothing compared to wearing white and gripping Maryse’s hand as the remaining join the fallen. There is no make up on his face, no rings on his fingers, no color in his hair. Only an omamori charm in his pocket to break up the white.

Magnus spares a thought for what Alec has done. For what he’s made of them all. Maryse had Isabelle beneath her arm, her trembling hand tucked in Magnus’. On his right, he can hear the uneven patter of Jace’s breath as he tries to hold himself together. 

Magnus takes his hand as well. This is a burden they will share, for their rest of lives. They are a family. Piecemeal and broken, but held together by one thing. Their love for Alec. 

It’s Maryse who should say the words. She’s the matriarch. But when her voice falters and fails and Isabelle clings to her to share their grief in the closest thing to privacy that they have, it’s Magnus’ voice that rings out across the sea of white. 

“Alexander Lightwood.”

They break apart then, hands disconnecting, and Magnus has never felt so terribly alone in all his life. 

Maryse and Isabelle take their place with Robert and Max. Simon and Clary take to each side of Jace and press in against him, offering their strength when he falters. 

Magnus can’t walk away. He can’t do this. Fingers brush against the curve of Alec’s cheek beneath the shroud, along the line of his nose. There is wetness pattering against the sheer white, and Magnus only realizes that it’s tears when Catarina steps forward to take him by the arm, and lead him to the others. 

It’s Isabelle who sobs when the lights begin their slow, meandering trek to the ceiling. Magnus finds himself unable to pull in a breath, tears unchecked now that they’re free. He can’t stop them. Maybe he won’t be able to again.

Ave atque vale.


	10. One sided Malec (canon divergent)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The wedding goes on as planned.

“I still dream about it, sometimes.”

He’s speaking to the buckles on his shoes, Alec little more than a blur of color in his peripheral. Magnus knows what he’ll see if he looks over now. 

A little girl with raven hair and Lydia Branwell’s blue eyes, curled into her father’s lap with a hand over the bracelet on his wrist, sleeping peacefully. 

Magnus has done everything that’s been asked of him. He’s helped the clave put away Valentine for good, he’s stood and kept the wards up while he was executed. And he’s offered his own blessings over a little dark heard, and smiled a mirror false smile and called himself fairy godmother to the little Lightwood girl. 

But none of it was enough to make the dreams stop. 

The dreams were he opens the door to the sanctuary before the rune is etched into Alec’s skin. The dreams where Alec turns away from responsibility and family, and turns towards him. 

Selfish dreams, but one in the morning is a selfish hour, and Magnus is nursing his third whiskey of the evening. If Alec wants him to leave, then he’ll have to tell him. Lydia is in Idris for the week for work, and everything about Magnus being here is wrong. 

But what has he ever been but a fool in love?

Magnus drains the rest of his glass, ice clinking against the sides before he settles it on the coffee table, and stands. Alec’s shoulder is tension rod tight beneath his hand when he pats it on his way to the front door. 

“Goodnight, Alexander.”


	11. Highschool AU

“You were the first time I really thought about _it._ ”

He’s speaking to the softly sloped curve of Alec’s shoulders where’s curled up on his bed, facing the wall. (Even in his sleep, Alec was defensive. Closed off.) Magnus doesn’t know why he’s saying it. 

Except he does. Because he can’t stop thinking about sitting on that bus with Catarina, and the way she’d looked at him with that pitying smile of hers and told him _one of these days Magnus, you’re going to have to own it._

And she’s right. Catarina is always right, though Magnus will never tell her that.

“I thought maybe…” His heart is beating too hard in his chest, like it’s pounding against the walls of its cage to get free. Magnus has never said these things out loud. He’s never owned it. 

“I thought maybe I was supposed to be a girl. Because I like make up. And I like nice clothes. And I would sit there sometimes, and I’d think about you. Alec Lightwood. Star of the team, no matter how much you try and hide behind your brother. And I went full cliche, man…”

He laughs under his breath, dragging his fingertips across his lips. “The cheerleader and the football player. I’d think about you putting your arm around me, the same way you do with Lydia. But it didn’t feel right. The same way this doesn’t feel right.”

The first confession falls off his shoulders like a leaden weight. “I look in the mirror, and I don’t feel like my skin is right. Not as the dorky dance kid, and not as a girl, either.”

Alec shifts in his sleep, and Magnus freezes, every muscle held still. He counts to one hundred, and then back down again. When Alec doesn’t move, the words sitting in his chest are desperate to come out. 

“When I’m in the shower, and I think about you…it was always a little bit of both. Lip gloss and nail polish and eyeliner, but I’m still a guy. I think about what it’d be like for you to kiss me. But _me_. The real me.”

The one who can’t wait for college, to get away from his shitty dad. The one who steals eyeliner from the drug store and puts it on in the bathroom mirror, and hates having to wash it off in the shower five minutes later. 

“I guess…at least when I get older and I get to tell my ‘how did you know’ story, I can tell people about Alexander Lightwood and how he made me want to be myself.”


	12. Actors (not RPF)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Although I use the names Harry and Matt for their TV show characters, this is in no way based on the real people.

His agent tells him that the show is going to be huge. It’s some post apoc genre piece with some kind of monsters that aren’t zombies, thank God, because those are played to death. The only reason Magnus really looks at the script is because his agent hooks him with ‘you’d get to play a gay love affair.’ 

Magnus has been very vehemently bisexual since the moment he moved out of his father’s house at eighteen, and he’s done nothing to hide it. And as his agent as learned, through Magnus’ greatest hits of stage shows, if it’s representative of LGBT culture, he’ll almost always be in. 

(Because boys like him need to know it’s okay. Be it Asian boys, or theater boys, or even bisexual boys. If Magnus’ fucked up childhood can be avoided in someone else, then he almost feels obligated.)

So he takes the table read, since he’s come highly recommended without really reading the script. Magnus only realizes when he’s flipping the pages at the table that his character isn’t out, he isn’t open about his sexuality, and he’s nothing like Magnus. 

Damn it, Ragnor. He’s invested now. 

Magnus spends the next half hour taking notes, trying to build an idea of the character out of what little information he has, trying to charm more of the character arc out of the director, until the door swings open to his possible counterpart. 

Alec Lightwood was tall, dark, and handsome, with stunning eyes. He was absolutely the type that would draw eyes on the screen, whether he was actively involved in the scene, or just sitting in the background. He shakes everyone’s hand and thanks them quietly for the opportunity. 

Magnus is finding himself curious what the hook will be, with two quiet characters, until the camera is turned on them, and they begin to read. Alec changes in nearly imperceptible waves. His shoulders soften, his spine becomes loose. A hand through his hair makes it carefully wild, and his smile completely changes his entire facial structure. 

Oh, game on. 

Magnus plays the enamored, stuttering closeted virgin with an ease that would be worrying if he didn’t get laid regularly. And Alec plays the star like he was born to it. (There’s no denying it, whether he’s given top billing or not, Alec’s “Matt” would be the star.)

Alec shakes his hand again on the way out, and Magnus blames the butterflies on the lingering feeling of being in character. 

\--------------------

They both get the job, though the egotistical part of Magnus isn’t surprised. He and Alec have chemistry, they work well together. 

They film in Atlanta, surrounded by lush greenery and removed enough from the city proper that it actually feels secluded sometimes. Magnus gets an apartment in the city, he resigns himself to the lack of quality bars, and he throws himself into understanding his “Harry”. 

Thankfully, he’s not alone. When Magnus was given the good news about the part, he’d found Alec’s woefully bare twitter and followed him. From a DM, they ended up texting. Casual conversation quickly gave way to world building, and they’ve spent weeks prior to filming building worlds and lives and motives for their boys. 

Magnus isn’t shy about it. He loves world building, he loves taking a character and making it his own. Even if there are days that he’s exhausted by a fictional life, by the weight and pressure of shoving down who he really was. (It’s something he hasn’t done in years. But the well of knowledge is there, and Magnus is confident he can draw on it when he needs to, for scenes.)

They film episode by episode, and Magnus takes to episodic television better than he ever thought he would. He’s got enough of a lack of a social life that he learns his lines with ease, and by episode two, Alec is murmuring to him under his breath about how they should stand, how they should move, how to frame scenes. 

They’re lucky to have directors who are understanding. And Magnus is lucky to have Alec, who seems to have no fear about facing their director and offering his earnest, no nonsense opinions to them. 

Distantly, Magnus knows it’s coming. He’d been very, very clear to Ragnor that he wasn’t getting roped into another queerbaiting role, and Ragnor had told him, in his exasperated way of his ‘there’s at least a kiss in this season, we’ll negotiate your desire for full frontal nudity into the next.’ 

It’s episode six, Magnus realizes when the script is dropped to him via courier on a Sunday night. He reads the page a dozen times, anticipation and excitement sparking in his veins. He can’t help it, he texts Alec. _Did you see what’s coming up this week?_

_Not yet, at the gym. What’s up?_

Magnus feels a very “Harry” level of self consciousness, and shoves it down. He’s not some poor repressed kid. And this is just work. He texts _you’ll see ;)_ and leaves it at that. He grabs his shoes from near the door, and slips them on. Maybe a run would take the edge off. 

\----

For all his concerns that he’ll make it weird when it comes time to film, Magnus is completely in the groove, and any nervous worry he feels in his gut is “Harry’s” and not his own. There’s a moment, a hush that falls after the action call, and Magnus watches Alec fall away with the same wonder he’d felt in the table read. 

_“No one has to know.” Matt’s voice is teasing, and low. Harry’s back connects with the closed door, and he has nowhere else to go. There are people on the other side of the door, a thought that makes his heart beat so hard that it hurts._

_There are people out there, and Matt is right here, a palm planted to the door beside Harry’s ear to keep him boxed in. It should make his blood boil, this assumption, this forwardness. But all it does is make him warm in other ways._

_“It’s just you and me.” Harry feels the words feather warm against his lips, and he’s lost. He wants so badly to close that last inch, to finally do what he’s been thinking about doing since they found somewhere safe to settle all those weeks ago. “Let me kiss you.”_

_It’s a compromise. A way for Harry to have what he wants without being the one to reach for it. A guilty escape route. He looks down, surprised to see his hand at Matt’s chest, feeling the rapid beat of his heart beneath his splayed fingers. Matt leans in-_

“Magnus, you need to be more passive. Let the moment hang.” 

Magnus flinches at the intrusion of reality, and the director’s voice. He looks up to see Alec looking at his shoes, somewhere between himself and in character, waiting for the reset, so they can continue. 

“Better?” Magnus rolls his shoulders forward, and makes himself smaller, chin to his chest and watching through his lashes. 

“Perfect, Alec reset from-”

_“Let me kiss you.”_

_Harry feels paralyzed, pinned to the spot. He couldn’t move if he wanted to, couldn’t run. (Couldn’t kiss him back.) He watches through lowered lashes as Alec---Matt leans in, their lips connecting._

_There’s a beat, a long moment that’s just a chaste pressure against his lips. And then the dam inside of Harry breaks wide open, and it all comes rushing out of him. His back arches as he opens up into the kiss, desperate to taste him._

_Matt meets him with a groan, a hand tight against his hip to keep him pressed to the door. Harry gets a hand in dark hair (forearm turned down, palm up, not blocking the shot) and loses himself to the ferocious hunger of the kiss._

“Cut! Okay guys, that was great. I want another take from a different angle, but just like that.”


End file.
